WyldKat wrote on Nov 30, 2010, 13:25:Black Prophecy is everyone who doesn't like playing a pretty spreadsheets answer to EVE, and it couldn't come soon enough.

Dear <optional deit(ies) here> yes. I can't stand Eve. It was great for the first day or so, and then you realised that the entire game is setup in such a way to ensure you stay subscribed just so you can pay them money long enough for them to make a profit.

And don't get me started on the pointless number of hours I spent just travelling from place to place without doing *anything*!

And no, sorry, I'm not interested in a graphical spreadsheet application or IRC client. I want a game!

Tanto Edge wrote on Nov 25, 2010, 19:43:Nice move!I sincerely hope the service improves and grows, as it's definitely a next gen thing.Imagine if they could emulate through iPhone or Android?There's no end to the possibilities.Stream Doom to your Android, stream Crysis to the iPhone.It's just an image buffer issue and they're overcoming these things fast.

The future is now

I hope it does not. Things like this can drive gaming and innovation into the ground.

Limited hardware. Crappy resolutions. Lack of tweaking and modding. It is everything that will cause the death of any decent gaming and take the control over what we play and how we play it out of our hands.

Yes please. Let this die, die, die, die, die.

This will turn gaming into software as a service whether it's single player or multi player.

What little rights we have left at this point as gamers will be gone when things like OnLive become prevalent.

Steele Johnson wrote on Nov 23, 2010, 15:51:Has anyone seen a game using the RAGE engine? The only one I've seen is the Rage iPhone app, which generally demonstrates an on-rails, closed quarters shooter like all the id games. Show me a shipped game that uses the RAGE engine and then I'll pass judgement.

No one will until iD or their parent company releases one. They've already said they won't be licensing the Rage engine to anyone else.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, CD Projekt, but the RIAA spent like 20 million dollars in legal fees to collect 800,000 dollars of fines.

That is not what normal people would call smart business.

Creston

No, this is perfectly legitimate. They're protecting their commercial interests, and I sincerely doubt they're going to demand millions of dollars or even tens of thousands like the RIAA does.

There's also a huge difference here -- the RIAA is trying to defend a dying business model that's reliant on a ridiculous long term copyright system, while CD Projekt is simply trying to protect a legitimate product. They are the artist and publisher here!

The only mistake they made as I see it was to announce this. They should have just done it quietly and moved on.

The game is DRM free. That's sufficient to earn my goodwill.

If they want to go after cheapskates who download crap from torrent sites, then more power to them!

Overon wrote on Nov 22, 2010, 20:09:If CD Projekt keep doing stuff like this they will join the likes of Valve, Blizzard in the small group of the ultra PC friendly developers.

You mean, join the group of ultra PC friendly developers that developers like Blizzard are no longer part of? Sorry, after Blizzard's removal of true LAN play, spawning, addition of RealID and everything else, they deserve to be named fiends; not friends.

nutshell42 wrote on Nov 22, 2010, 15:46:I used to argue against DRM, too. I still admire their stance and wish them only the best but I fear a few things point to the sad conclusion that getting a week or two of sales before the game is cracked is one of the most important factors for PC game sales.

I'm not sure what universe you're from, but in this one, a lot of games are cracked before they even hit the shelves. So I'm not sure where you're getting this imaginary "one to two weeks of sales from", but it's quite hilarious.

Yes and no. Yes to the DRM-free part, no to the preorder part. This is no preorder. It's only a promo page, where you can download free stuff after logging in into your GOG account. And once again, GOG.com is making fun of it's customers. Another perfect example of polish humor?

But i do like the DRM-less approach, a lot!!!

What planet are you on? It clearly says pre-order, and clearly requires you to login to do it.

Nxs wrote on Nov 11, 2010, 12:22:Wrong! What is really driving people to steam? You can't play a damn PC game without it! IN other words, you have no choice but to play almost any PC game on steam no matter where you bought it.

Almost any game? What? Nonsense, plenty of games don't use steam. You are talking full steamworks games which are a minority, not a majority. Just because you can buy it on steam and use it on steam, doesn't mean steam is required if you buy a retail copy.

It does if that retail copy uses steamworks DRM, which a lot of retail copies do.

While there are some titles soled on Steam and also sold in the store without steam, those seem far less common than the "steam-only" variety.

DrEvil wrote on Nov 11, 2010, 16:05:You talk about Steam as if the service was responsible for setting the prices. It's not. The publishers set the prices; not Steam.

You speak as if they have zero input on the matter - and thats ludicrous

Steam is a multi-billion corp, they've got plenty of swing with the pubs

You give them too much credit. Maybe in another one or two years as more and more retail sales get pushed onto Steam they might have that clout, but even then, revenue from console games dwarfs the PC.

If Valve tried to push EA for example, EA would probably just say, "Hey, we already have our own digital distribution service, bye!".

Even then, should Valve have that kind of power? That's the sort of behaviour you expect from monopolists.

Ultimately, I don't want Valve to control pricing. I want the free market to.

However, I don't think gog.com's current model would work well for games that need to be updated frequently as they don't have an easy update program or the like.

I use Steam as well, but I wish Steam was more like GOG.

In particular, I find it really heinous that Valve allows publishers to add their own DRM on top of the DRM that Steam already provides. (e.g. games that use SecuROM in addition to Steam) That's something Valve could require publishers not do, but they'd rather have the money

space captain wrote on Nov 11, 2010, 15:19:Steam is bullshit for charging full retail prices on games when you receive no actual physical merchandise.. as there is a significant amount of developmental money that goes into art/packaging/advertising, which is recouped in the purchase price - and im not just talking about the component cost, which is negligible. Since steam doesnt deliver any physical materials, the resulting retail price should be lower by a noticeable margin.

You talk about Steam as if the service was responsible for setting the prices. It's not. The publishers set the prices; not Steam.

Even then though, you're being a bit unfair given that you can practically guarantee that at multiple points during the year, publishers choose to sell their games on Steam for far below the amount you'd ever find them at retail.

Sepharo wrote on Oct 28, 2010, 19:54:The idiocy in this thread is amazing.

Activision wants to enforce a region lockout, Germany wants to enforce an adult rating ban, and apparently when Steam agrees to their demands simply as a retailer it is Valve's fault.

Fucking clowns. This is not like Wal-Mart banning books. It's a fucking contractual agreement required by Activision.

No freakin' kidding. This whole mess ultimately only exists because of laws in Germany. It doesn't matter if Germany has an age verification system. The point is that crap wouldn't even be needed if it wasn't for German law.